Each Monday, I make my morning rounds of the weeklies (Businessweek, Newsweek, etc.) and today as I scrolled to the bottom Newsweek.com's homepage, I noticed something I haven't seen before -- a box that's called "Blog Round Up" that, judging by the logo below it, is powered by Technorati (see photo, left). The tagline in the box says "The most blogged about articles on Newsweek in the past 7 days" and there's a link at the bottom of the box (More Blog Round Up) to a much more fully fleshed out page that also appears to be powered by Technorati (warning: it could be in an experimental state since the back button didn't work for me). That page's tagline is "The top 10 Newsweek stories generating the most discussion on Weblogs within the past 7 days." If you click through from one of the story-level links in the box on the home page (eg: What Karl Rove Told a Reporter About Plame), it takes you to the actual Newsweek story. But the interesting thing about that story level page is that there's a new, Technorati-powered component on the right side that displayed "659 blogs are discussing What Karl Rove Told a Reporter About Plame right now" and it gives you an opportunity to not only click through and see what's being said, but to also watch the blogosphere for more blog entries related to that Newsweek story using a Technorati "Watch List." The Technorati component appears to be available on other Newsweek stories as well (one's that aren't necessarily Newsweek's "Top 10"), so it could be on all of Newsweek's stories (sorry, I can't check every story).
So, this is pretty cool. From pretty much anywhere on Newsweek's site you can go from the news to the conversation taking place in the blogosphere about that news. You can monitor the conversation, or, if you have your own blog, join it (another option to join the conversation is to enter a comment on someone else's blog. Me personally? I think the best way to join the conversation is to use a combination of your own blog and Trackback a technology that can take a blog you've written and surface it as a comment on one or more blogs belonging to other people).
There's no word on whether this is permanent or if something like it might start appearing elsewhere on the Web. I know I've talked to Technorati CEO David Sifry about something like this for ZDNet, but I'm actually looking for something a little bit different (like, the 10 most interesting IT-related conversations taking place in the blogosphere at any point in time. Thoughts? Please comment below.). Sifry was not available for comment (it was still early on the West Coast as I was putting this blog together), nor could I raise Newsweek.com Editor Dierdre Depke on the phone. More to come if I get a hold of them and there's anything to add.
